Monday, June 24, 2013

I
along with many others noted the milestone of CO2 atmospheric concentrations
passing 400 ppm last month – but that’s not all the data are telling us.

I
recently checked Mauna Loa (and global) CO2 for the first time since Mauna Loa
crossed 400 ppm for a day. It appears that in the last week in May, it was
above 400 ppm on average for a full week, and on one day it approached 400.5
ppm. For the month of May, Mauna Loa CO2 was nearly 400 ppm (399.77) and was
approximately 3 ppm higher than last year. It appears that so far this year
Mauna Loa and global CO2 are averaging close to 3 ppm above last year, which
would be a figure well above all other years since 1998 (2.93 ML). Btw, last
year's was the second largest increase on record (2.65).

My
overall conclusion: I don't know if this will affect overall weather the way
1998’s record CO2 increase may have (the year of the global yearly temp record,
which has not been surpassed in a major way since, although we're getting
pretty darn close). But it does add a potential major temperature booster. It
does seem to confirm that CO2 atmospheric concentration continues to increase
exponentially rather than linearly. And it does present a bleak prospect for
the next few years.

What
do I mean?

Still “Business As Usual”

The usual phrase for following the CO2-emissions track we
have been on for the last 160 years, and especially the last 35 years, is “business
as usual”.We see a lot of planning and
some hopeful examples from nations like Germany and Sweden in trying to get
away from this kind of inexorable percentage increase in emissions that results
in exponentially increasing CO2 concentrations and leads to temperature
increases from now on well above the 2 degrees C (actually, 2.6-2.8 C according
to what I know of the latest credible research) that everyone seems to be
trying not to surpass.In fact, “business
as usual” has been estimated to result in perhaps 9 degrees F of global average
temperature increase and 16 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. Considering
the fact that the models saying this are not nearly adequately factoring in
permafrost melt that will lead to major additional CO2 releases to the
atmosphere (and a few harder-to-estimate factors such as likely major increases
in methane emissions), you should view the temperature figure as one that we
will achieve only with extreme luck. Me, I’m guessing more like 12 degrees
temperature rise and 20 feet sea level rise (plus 20 feet increase in storm
surge).

What the Mauna Loa and global CO2 figures are telling us is
that our present efforts are still not having a significant enough effect on “business
as usual.”This suggests, for example,
that the US figures showing perhaps a 7% reduction through 2011 or 2012 (figures
for 2012 represent a preliminary estimate that has been shown in the past to
underestimate actual emissions) probably represent the US multinational
companies exporting their emissions to countries like China and India.They also suggest that the US switch to natural
gas has far less effect on CO2 emissions than anticipated, and that announced
Chinese efforts to reduce emissions have had a minor (if any) effect on what is
now the world’s greatest CO2-emissions ramp-up.

A Call To Face Real Reality

It seems to me that much of the commentary about what to do
about this simply does not comprehend the full dimensions of “business as usual”
as we have been practicing it for the last few decades, including the ongoing
efforts to do something about global warming. So here’s my initial attempt to summarize the
way I see it.

Roughly speaking, political reality breaks down across the
globe into three groups:

1.Climate deniers,
or those who would effectively pursue policies that ramp up CO2 emissions
further.

2.Political and economic ameliorators, who would attempt to respond to their understanding
of the scientific research while placing first and foremost no or little change
in the political and economic strategies that are presently being pursued,
especially the ones that involve government regulation.That is, they seek to achieve what in the
past has been change by achieving what is close to a positive-sum game for
everyone.By the way, even carbon
taxation right now falls under this heading.

3.The few (like me, unfortunately) who are calling
for major changes now now now.

Responding adequately to this global warming crisis, it
seems to me, requires that we face two unpalatable realities:

A.Neither group 1 nor group 2 will likely avoid
the catastrophes that will result from “business as usual.”I’ll explain why in a minute.

B.However, things
can always get worse.In other
words, if we throw up our hands and say why bother to try if we can’t figure
out how to do major changes, then, as in the case of handing matters over to the
climate deniers, the catastrophes will be worse, and sooner.

Why do I say we can’t avoid catastrophes via group 2’s strategies?Let’s think of Japan just after WW II – about
as devastated economically as it was possible to be.And yet, 30 years later, we found ourselves
worrying if Japan was going to become the #1 economy in the world.It’s a story we have seen repeated over and over,
and it involves the fact that as long as there is an outside world to take a hand
and as long as the economy can piggyback via investment on its core labor and
resource assets (I’m including farming here) underlaid by government regulatory
“rules of the game”, the body of understanding of how to run a modern economy
and government allows springing back to somewhere where you were before catastrophe
struck.

But global warming’s effects, it seems to me, for the first
time in human history, make this an approach that will break down sooner or
later.In effect, in systems analysis
terms, this is simultaneous strain on all key components of the system,
increasing exponentially, that you respond to by fixing problems only after the
fact and only to handle last year’s strain.In other words, while you are handling last year’s disaster and spending
money to buy levees to handle that unprecedented disaster, another
exponentially greater disaster is on the way, on which you are going to have to
spend more money than this year’s.And
this is happening on such a widespread scale across the world that all of the
multinationals and all of the nations are facing these increasing strains simultaneously
– and so their attempts to help each other are more and more limited.

At a certain point, then, things begin to operate basically
in reverse.Political elites reflecting
economic elites react to the rising costs by failing to serve greater and greater
segments of the population in order to keep up the economy.This creates unrest and government
breakdowns, which add yet more economic stress.This also means that governments and political elites will decrease
efforts to cut emissions, continuing the emissions rise that counteracts to some
extent the effects of the shrinking economy.And, at a breaking point, there is a major downward economic shift that
represents a major decrease in the global economy’s ability to handle the
increasing catastrophes.

All this sounds theoretical.I would suggest that the likely proximate cause of the breaking point
will be agriculture – in other words, feeding ourselves.I am not just talking the developing world
here:I am talking about the developed
nations.A projection of the world in
2050-2090 shows most temperate-zone areas in extreme drought.Add to that drawdown of aquifers, loss of
winter melt-off, and 55-odd feet of increased reach of salt water into today’s
deltas and estuaries that comprise 1/3 of global food-growing, and we are
talking about losing up to 90% of the world’s present growing areas, much of
this occurring somewhere between 2050 and 2100.For example, California’s growing areas east of San Francisco provide an
amazing amount of the world’s food.Presently proposed fixes to the dams that keep salt water out of this
area, even if they ever get them done, are probably only going to be adequate
to handle matters until 2050-2060.And
there’s no obvious comparable area to move that production to.

Is there really anything to be done about all this?Lots.But it all involves (a) being far more aggressive on emissions reduction
(“mitigation”) and (b) spending much more money now to handle oncoming
disasters much further into the future (“adaptation”).(a) is our only hope for avoiding things
being even worse than this; (b) is our hope for making things more tolerable in
the horrible future world that we have already created for ourselves, and so
increasing our chances of doing (a) well. Let’s be clear on this: even good
adaptation won’t avoid the consequences of failure to mitigate.Protection for our food sources will sooner
or later have to face the fact that we will have perhaps 10-20% of the food
sources we have now.Whatever else we
do, we need to mitigate first and foremost.

There is one known successful model for doing this: it’s called
WW II in America.We accepted drastic
changes in the economy, decreases in food supply, and disruptions in life in
order to win the war.That is what the
world could do, or what nations could do – except that this is a war of all against
ourselves, in which we do not destroy the enemy unless the enemy effectively resists
major changes in its economy and its peoples’ lives.

Failing that, I simply assert from long familial knowledge
of politics and governments that there is far, far more that could be done
about global warming under the covers than is being done now.Fundamentally, the ameliorators don’t really
believe that this is anything new in human history.So they don’t take the political chances that
they could get away with, and they don’t play dirty politics with the
deniers.

And that brings me back to facing reality.For the ameliorators, for us all, a key part
of the answer lies in facing the realities that I have outlined – and especially
the part about the less you do, the worse things get, even beyond where they
are now.And so, my own personal
response is simply to say, it ain’t so, rather than keep silent – while making
it clear who is worse than whom, and why that matters.

How should we react to the continuing exponential rise in
CO2 atmospheric concentration? I would suggest that we begin by facing the real reality of its effects and of our
failure to deal with those effects.

Wayne Kernochan

About Me

I have recently retired. Before retirement, I was a long-time computer industry analyst at firms like Aberdeen Group and Yankee Group, and before that a programmer at Prime Computer and Computer Corp. of America. Sloan/MIT MBA, Cornell Computer Science Master's, and Harvard college degrees. Used to play the violin, and have written unpublished books about personal finance, violin playing, and the relationship between religion and mathematics, as well as three plays, two musicals, a screenplay on climate change, short stories, and poetry. I intend to use this blog in future both to continue to enjoy the computing field and to pursue my interests in many other areas (e.g., climate change, history, issues of the day).